Firearms Law Textbook 2024 Supplement Now Available

For free -- 566 pages

I'm pleased to announce the publication of the 2024 Annual Supplement for the textbook Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy. The supplement is available here as a PDF.

The base textbook was published in October 2021, and is coauthored by Nicholas J. Johnson (Fordham), George A. Mocsary (Wyoming), E. Gregory Wallace (Campbell), Donald Kilmer (Lincoln), and me. The book's public website is here, and the Aspen Publishers page for the book is here. The 2024 Supplement is a guide to Bruen and the significant post-Bruen litigation.

While the 2024 Supplement discusses a large variety of cases, including state court cases involving state constitutional law, here are some of the major items:

• A long excerpt of Bruen, with many Notes and Questions, which point readers to leading pro/con scholarship about the case.
• A long excerpt of Rahimi.
• Updates on the latest social science and data.
• A long excerpt of Cargill v. Garland, on bump stocks, as well as updates on everything else about the National Firearms Act.
• A detailed essay by George Mason Prof. Robert Leider explaining the complexities of the major 2022 federal gun control statute.
• Analysis by attorney Johanna Reeves of ATF's "Frame or Receiver Rule."
• Cases summaries and excerpts on all the major issues being litigated under the Bruen framework, including prohibited persons, right to carry, bans on types of arms, and many other types of restrictions.
• And lots more!

But wait, that's not all. The base textbook is available in print, and (from the publisher's website for students and faculty) as an e-book. There are also seven free supplemental chapters available online, from the book's public website. These cover: Firearms Policy and Status; International Law; Comparative Law; In-Depth Explanation of Firearms and Ammunition; Antecedents of the Second Amendment; Arms Rights, Arms Duties, and Arms Control in the United Kingdom; and The Evolution of Firearms Technology from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First Century.

Among the things you will find in the online chapters are 25 pages of in-depth research on the role of gun control and armed resistance in the Turkish genocide of Armenians and other Christians in the early twentieth century, a hundred pages about gun control and armed resistance in Communist China and Tibet; ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese law and philosophy about arms; United Nations gun control; modern law about arms on Native American reservations; and many other topics.

We hope that in the 2024 Supplement and in the online chapters, students writing Notes and professors writing Articles may find interesting issues for further exploration. We also hope that judges, clerks, and litigators will find the 2024 Supplement to be a helpful guide to the post-Bruen legal environment, and that the two online chapters about firearms mechanics (how modern firearms operate; and the history of firearms development) may also be useful.

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

The idea that our gun rights protect against tyranny is nuts. It is (as is obvious by now -- check what almost happened to Trump this week, and what could have happened on 1/6/21 if the attackers were better armed and organized) destabilizing and dangerous to the continuation of our Republic. And of course it is at odds with the purpose and meaning of the 2A. It certainly has no place in what is apparently trying to be a sober, serious scholarly work on the 2A.

I don't expect a substantive response to this comment.

[Rossami]

I'm not sure whether the fact that you think it's nuts says more about you or about the sorry state of american education. It's not nuts, it's not "at odds with the purpose and meaning of the 2A" and you won't get a substantive response to your comment because you haven't yet made a coherent argument that can be responded to.

But I suspect you're just trolling and don't want a substantive response in the first place...

[Dan Schiavetta]

The 2A was adopted when the military defense of this nation was in the hands of the state militias and the Framers had been spooked by Shays’s Rebellion and other attempts to circumvent or compete with the established militias.

On Sunday at Trump’s golf course, Routhe was, according to Prof. Kopel’s view, validly part of the militia (being an adult) and was using a firearm for a legitimate 2A purpose, fighting (incipient) tyranny. Tell me where I’m wrong here.

[Brett Bellmore]

Jefferson didn't seem terribly spooked. His letter seems right on point, too.

Routhe had been misled by Democrats into thinking that Trump was an incipient tyrant, a threat to democracy himself. He foolishly believed that, failing to understand that it was all hysterical political rhetoric.

Given that foolish belief, he acted appropriately. If YOU actually believed it, maybe you'd do the same. But, of course, on some level you're actually aware that it's all empty propaganda, perhaps intended to energize people like Routhe.

As Jefferson says, a candidate for President being shot once in a while? That's a pretty cheap price to pay for the ability to resist genuine tyranny should it show up.

Of course, the first obsession of actual tyrants is making sure their political foes are disarmed, because actual tyrants know they're planning on ruling by fear and force, and will be making a lot of people killing mad. You might try to understand that some time, there's at least a theoretical possibility that you'd finally understand where the threat of tyranny actually comes from in this country; Not the side that isn't afraid of an armed populace, certainly.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Routh was also a convicted felon, prohibited from possessing firearms, so would not have been part of any militia.

[Brett Bellmore]

Actually, back in the 18th century he probably would have been, since lifetime bars on gun ownership after a felony conviction weren't all that common yet, and certainly not federally mandated.

[Area Man]

I’ll try to respond, though I don’t know if you’ll consider it substantive.

The Second Amendment protects against tyranny in more subtle ways than is given credit. First, against our own government, it acts as a deterrent against actions the government may decide to take. If the government wanted to become tyrannical, it would have to strongly take into account the fact that the citizenry, while it would likely lose, would put up a strong fight. And a prolonged resistance could inspire a stronger one, or even dissension in the military. (Imagine if the people of Venezuela had easy access to guns right now. They might be able to press the opposition’s win. Instead, the opposition candidate has fled the country and the tyrants remain in power.)

Second, against foreign tyranny, there is a similar effect. There is no way that a foreign nation could occupy this country. If they got through our military (and nukes), the populace would simply never allow itself to be occupied.

Finally, another form of tyranny is government inaction or collusion with hostile forces. A perfect example of this is actually one of the main impetuses for the 14th Amendment, namely, governments either turning a blind eye to KKK tyranny or actively supporting it. Legally, blacks couldn’t arm and defend themselves in many parts of the South after the war, but the 14th Amendment gave them a literal fighting chance—at least before the Supreme Court gutted it in favor of more state power.

So, those are just some ways gun rights help protect against tyranny.

[Dan Schiavetta]

See my response above. Mr. Routhe probably drew inspiration from the analysis you have recited.

[Area Man]

I don’t see how that answers my point that domestic or foreign governments are deterred from true tyranny by an armed citizenry, or that citizens can protect themselves when the government fails to act against violent actors or colludes with such actors.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Area Man — Your point is uncritically reasoned, based tacitly on an unfounded premise, and unreflective.

Start with your uncritical reasoning. You contradict the founders. Their insistence was that their invention of joint popular sovereignty had power to put the question of government tyranny aside. Under the founders' American system of government, the People already have control of the government, and collectively wield a power greater than government's. It is thus paradoxical to suppose the People defend anything by rebelling against themselves. In principle, that protection against government abuse obviates any possible constructive use of armed rebellion.

Thus, only two tasks were left to the militias. First, in the absence of a standing army, defense against a foreign enemy. With the most powerful standing military in world history already protecting the U.S., that task has become irrelevant to this discussion.

Second, to suppress internal rebellions, which as mentioned above were presumptively illegitimate—any such rebels could only be seeking on behalf of themselves the overthrow of a government they already had their legitimate share in controlling.

Your tacit premise is that the armed defenders you posit will somehow always be legitimately representative of the polity as a whole. The much-more likely case is that they will be a disgruntled minority engaged in insurrection, attempting to narrow government power to the scope of their own control, while excluding others.

Given that, it is unreflective to omit the obvious problem that armed internal vigilantism invites armed internal counter-force—with a likely outcome being that whichever armed faction proves victorious by brute force will thereafter contest against the jointly sovereign People for their sovereignty.

Thus, the argument that it was virtuous to arm blacks in Reconstruction America—as enticing as it may seem—crashes against the historical reality that the same principle armed their oppressors, and decisively so. Under precisely the rule of arms you advocate, white oppressors of blacks ended up sovereign throughout the South for nearly a century. It became a reign of terror.

That lasted until the equally militant but more-peaceful civil rights era arrived post-WW II. That, not armed rebellion, achieved the still-limited, but undoubted triumph we see today.

Whatever advantages gun fans may purport to see in such a mis-arrangement of premises, there is no historical case at all that it was an arrangement intended at the founding, or authorized by the Constitution. It is unwise to advocate for that.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Your tacit premise is that the armed defenders you posit will somehow always be legitimately representative of the polity as a whole. "

No, the assumption is that, as with Shays, if they're not they'll lose.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore — Pure romance.

Alternatives: The sides are equally divided. One side is superior in numbers; the other superior in arms. One side fights defensively the other offensively. One side enjoys assistance from abroad, from a long-time enemy of the other side. One side is larger in numbers, and fights to restore the status quo ante; the other side, less numerous, fights with weapons of mass destruction.

[Absaroka]

Right. Because if there is one thing obvious from even a casual study of military history, it is that the best way for one side to maximize its chances of winning is to unilaterally and completely disarm. Any analysis that reaches a different conclusion must be wrong.

(Not to let facts get in the way, but Shay did lose - defeated by a ... hastily raised militia.)

[Brett Bellmore]

"the other side, less numerous, fights with weapons of mass destruction."

So, you're actually advising a disarmed populace so that the government won't be tempted to nuke it's own territory?

[Area Man]

I’m not going to reply to every point you make, but I’ll address a few.

First, I used the example of Venezuela above. The idea that the Venezuelan government is currently representative of the populace of that country is laughable. The opposition won. However, the government is entrenched in every institution of power, so the people cannot enforce their will through peaceful means. Violence is the only option left to them to do so.

If that were to happen in this country–i.e., the government were to stymie any effort of the people to peacefully take power–then it would be tyrannical. I want to be *very* clear here, I do *not, not, not* believe that any election has been stolen in this country. But if it had been, and the governing faction was in control of the levers of power, then the people would be within their rights to use arms to rebel.

My point above is that, in this country, the government is *unlikely* to ever be in such a position in large part because it would face a bloodbath if it tried. It’s simply not worth the effort when all you’re going to be ruling over in the end is a bunch of corpses. Arms possession by the public helps ensure that democratic efforts are all that is worth resorting to.

And the idea that the Founders didn’t believe that a democratic government could descend into tyranny is just weird. They very much knew it could and designed an entire constitutional system to prevent popular will from being the only arbiter of freedom.

Next, in modern times, I agree it is very unlikely that a foreign power would ever take over this country. But it’s not impossible. And it certainly wasn’t impossible at the time the Second Amendment was ratified. But a foreign power is already going to have to expend insane resources to defeat our military (putting aside nukes completely). If it were to win, it would then have to reckon with a heavily armed populace. Foreign governments are well aware of how many Americans own guns. It simply isn’t worth the effort of invading and occupying. Again, arms possession deters tyranny.

Finally, you ignore the history completely that blacks were subjected to violence when disarmed. They themselves begged Congress for legal protection to arm themselves–which Congress granted with the 14th Amendment. It was only after the Supreme Court (i.e., a government institution) gutted the P&I Clause that blacks essentially lost the ability to protect themselves again. That white people also had the right to keep and bear arms didn’t mean they had the right to terrorize people with them. And the real point is, when state legislatures did all they could to undermine the rights of blacks, and law enforcement colluded with the Klan, the last line of defense for blacks was themselves and their communities. You can’t start a civil-rights movement if you’re dead.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Area Man — Show evidence from the historical record to support the notion that the 2A was intended to accomplish any aspect of the romantic-but-preposterous pro-gun agenda you defend.

You make your arguments for two reasons. First, you think they sound plausible. Second, they lead in the direction where you want gun policy to come out.

Note that neither of those reasons is supported by historical evidence. Disagree? Show specific evidence you can point to—not just talk about—evidence that anyone else is free to access and point to themselves.

A good first rule of critical thinking is to be able to answer the question, "How do I know that?" I think if you try to apply that rule to your own pro-gun advocacy, you will find yourself mumbling something like, "Well, it's all self-evident to me."

[Grifhunter]

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2459032-the-founders-second-amendment-origins-of-the-right-to-bear-arms

[BadLib]

I do *not, not, not* believe that any election has been stolen in this country.

Although the attempts to throw an election in Tennessee that was thwarted by a "citizens militia" in the Battle of Athens in 1945 came close.

(And whose to say that elections in Chicago and perhaps other places "back in the day" weren't "stolen".)

[Frank Drackman]

I wouldn't expect substantive responses to a moronic comment either

[Tempe Jeff]

Well, I'll give it a shot. J6 scared the crap out of Congress. They should be nervous about forcing us to accept the corrupt politics of Congress. The pipe bombs were planted by the police to shut down talking about corrupt electoral votes by several states. The 'insurrection' pushed by the FBI worked as well.

[Longtobefree]

For those who miss the Readers Digest:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The first half of it is now (to quote the politics of an earlier era) “inoperative”.

[Brett Bellmore]

True, but I still hold out hope we’ll be restored our full rights to, as Tench Coxe put it, “every terrible implement of the soldier”.

In case you think Coxe was misrepresenting things, here’s a letter from Madison, author of the 2nd amendment, thanking Coxe for his words.

“Accept my acknowledgments for your favor of the 18th. instant. The printed remarks inclosed in it are already I find in the Gazettes here. ”

The specific remarks he was referring to?

“Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”

You really do not understand the idea behind the 2nd amendment. It works together with the “Army clause”, ” To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; . . .”

Why two years? Because the founders feared standing armies as a tool of tyranny; That’s WHY a militia was necessary to the security of a free state: Because it allowed you to avoid having a standing army, primarily.

Just as much as a standing army, they feared what they called a “select” militia, a militia composed only of a fraction of the population thought to be dependable and obedient. Such select militias were thought to just be standing armies under a different name.

To that end, the prevention of a select militia which was a standing army in all but name, the right is guaranteed, not to the militia, but to the people themselves, so that they can be armed in appropriate for a militia fashion even if the government wants to discontinue having a general militia.

That pretty much describes our current situation, where the government maintains a standing army, the National Guard is, at best, a select militia, and efforts are regularly made to disarm the population, which is thought to not be trustworthy with arms because we might not ask how high when told to jump.

We live in the exact circumstances the 2nd amendment was intended to protect us from, and we’re not blind to that.

So, to be clear, in case you don't quite get it: Every attempt by the government to disarm people makes gun owners more convinced that we don't dare let it happen.

[Mr. Bumble]

...and no one muted by capt yet.

[Dan Schiavetta]

There seems to be no objection to the idea that, according to Prof. Kopel's formulation and those of the other VC'ers, Mr. Routhe was legitimately exercising his Second Amendment rights.

One might quibble around the edges -- yes, he was trespassing on the golf course -- but it seems that "exercise of Second Amendment rights" should be a defense to murder, or if that's too obvious, perhaps it could be a mitigating factor at sentencing.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, and this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding on your part.

Routhe had a 2nd amendment right to be armed. That doesn't mean he had a 2nd amendment right to commit murder.

To be sure, if Trump actually were a tyrant, rather than just being labeled one as part of hysterical political propaganda, Routhe in shooting him would have been carrying into effect one of the goals of the 2nd amendment. But that doesn't matter.

No tyrannical government would admit to being tyrannical, so it would be utterly fatuous to explicitly include a right to revolution or tyrannicide in the Constitution. A right to the means to both was much more sensible, because the very fact that the government was violating the right would help you in identifying whether they were tyrannical. But actually stating the right would be pointless, the only government that would care it was in the Constitution would be a government it wasn't applicable to!

Any defense had to rest on success; In the words of the poet,

"Treason doth never prosper,
what's the reason?
For if it doth prosper,
none dare call it treason."

[Brett Bellmore]

Now, I will give you this much: If there actually WERE a consensus that Trump was a tyrant, rather than it just being an hysterical talking point where it's not a hopeful "Will nobody rid me of this turbulent priest?" call out to people like Routhe, yeah, it might actually be a mitigating factor at sentencing.

But it IS at best just an hysterical political talking point.

[Dan Schiavetta]

What about the Jan. 6 attackers? If they had taken a shot at Mike Pence, and a few others, so as to undo the declaration of a stolen election and the installation of an illegitimate government, would that have been protected by the 2A?

[Brett Bellmore]

Why would you even bother asking that, when I'd already answered?

Again, it's the right to the means of revolution and tyrannicide, not, fatuously, the right to actually DO it, which has to be vindicated by success and a public consensus that you were right, not formal law.

But, look at what's going on in South America right now. Venezuela is now a dictatorship, a real one, not a rhetorical one. If the people of Venezuela took up arms and overthrew the government, and installed the opposition promising new and honest elections, would that be a horrifying thing?

Oh, wait, they can't; Venezuela has gun control, the people have no arms to take up...

[Dan Schiavetta]

Your construction of the 2A necessarily enables a small well armed minority to take over. Who can deny them that right? The only result is civil war. This is not “the security of a free state” that was the purpose of the 2A.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, that's the precise point of allowing the whole population to be armed: That no well armed small minority can overcome them!

A well armed small minority, such as the government itself, can overcome a disarmed population. They'll always be outgunned by an armed population.

The 2nd amendment consciously accepts the existence of some background level of violence, in return for making outright tyranny infeasible.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Your theory works only if everybody was armed, and not only that, well trained and organized. It seems to essentially require possession of militia type guns as a condition of citizenship. Otherwise a fringe well armed minority would be enabled to take over.

[Brett Bellmore]

I know you're reluctant to, but think this through: Approximately 1/3 of the US population when polled say they own a gun. (Half of Republicans, and 20% of Democrats...) We own enough guns that we could arm the rest of the population in a pinch, and have some left over.

So, how large a "fringe" are you talking here?

I put it to you that your "fringe well armed minority" IS the government, and it's trying to eliminate the possibility of an uprising against itself, so as to secure its position and free itself from the annoying constraint of having to avoid seriously pissing off the general population.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Elected by popular vote. Or by the Electoral College. Not a tyranny.

[Brett Bellmore]

Not yet a tyranny. But aiming to remove one of the major guardrails in the system that prevents it from becoming a tyranny.

The current dictatorship in Venezuela didn't start out a dictatorship, it only became one after the people were safely disarmed. But in retrospect, they probably had becoming a tyranny in mind when they set out to disarm the population.

Now, suppose I concede, for the sake of argument, that Democrats don't actually intend to behave tyrannically once they've foreclosed the possibility of armed revolt against themselves. They "just" intend to rule whether or not people like what they're doing.

But they still intend to foreclose it, and should they succeed, the incentives they face will have changed rather dramatically in favor of becoming tyrannical.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Oddly in all the other Western democracies the population got happily disarmed (by your standards) years ago. Tyrannies?

[Absaroka]

Right, it's soap box, ballot box, cartridge box, and in that order. It's totes not OK to change the order.

The cartridge box end of things isn't to prevent even a Trump from getting elected, it's to stop a Holomodor, or Khmer Rouge, or for that matter Nixon deciding 'hey, there's a war on, instead of leaving why don't I just declare martial law'. Or, you know, Trump trying to do the same.

I have a lot of confidence that the majority of the people in the middle of the ideological bell curve can be trusted with power - by voting, and if some fringe minority tries to ignore their votes, by using force to ensure the continuation of majority rule. It's a fundamentally a very democratic concept. Restricting ultimate power to a small minority is fundamentally undemocratic.

That's not to say that the current model is the only possible one; the Swiss have a pretty workable model as well. If you want to advocate for implementing something like the Swiss system, then discussing what arms are allowed outside that system, fine. But build the replacement first.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Oddly in all the other Western democracies the population got happily disarmed (by your standards) years ago. Tyrannies?"

Trending that way at various paces, yes.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Absaroka — I tried advocating a Swiss-type system right on this blog. Gun nuts looked into what that would entail, and denounced it. Way too much discipline and government control.

There is no getting around the fact that this nation's more-vociferous gun advocates want a romantic gun policy, not a well-ordered one.

I doubt those vociferados are even a near-majority among U.S. gun owners, by the way. Just the Area Men, Bellmores, Kopels, Volokhs, etc. Basically, they are the ones who ignore history and the Constitution, to insist instead you can reason from a well-ordered militia beginning, and then go via personal self-defense, to arrive finally at vigilantism as the one true hope for right-thinking government.

[Absaroka]

"I tried advocating a Swiss-type system right on this blog."

I think your advocacy missed the 'build it first' part, then, because you consistently advocate for every possible kind of arms restriction. Remember 'ban everything but two shot guns'?

It's fine to say 'we should invest in a new water treatment plant'. It's not smart to say 'let's tear down the existing water treatment plant right now, then maybe start thinking about a replacement at some point in the future'. Because that makes people wonder if you really want a water treatment plant.

[Brett Bellmore]

He really just wants a "Swiss system" as he envisions it. Nothing like what you'd actually find in Switzerland. And absolutely not the sort of system the Swiss had at the time the founders wanted to emulate it.

[Frank Drackman]

Are you really this big of an Idiot?

[Brett Bellmore]

No, I don't think he's actually an idiot. He's just not critically engaging his own comments before posting them, perhaps because he has an emotional block against doing so. People are perfectly capable of having smarts, and not applying them in a particular area for emotional reasons.

Everything he's saying here is essentially a gun control talking point, manipulated a little to fit, but somewhat mechanically, without actually thinking through if they genuinely make sense. Nothing he's saying is genuinely novel, if you've been debating gun controllers for decades, as I have.

Conflating the right to have a gun with the right to murder people? I've heard that one so many times I couldn't count the occasions.

[David Kopel]

The stupidity and sloth of the "captcrisis" troll is breathtaking, and is typical of how ignorant, lazy twits often attempt to hijack online comment fora.

First, the utility of arms in at least some situations is demonstrated beyond doubt by parts of the online chapters that were specifically enumerated in the post: namely Armenian resistance to Turkish genocide, which saved at least 200,000 lives; and Tibetan resistance to Chinese Communist invasion, which made possible the escape for 80,000 Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama (who was escorted out of Tibet under the protection of the Tibetan resistance army), and the consequent creation of a Tibetan diaspora that could keep alive true Tibetan Buddhism. Obviously, armed resistance does not always succeed, as shown by the continuing communist rule of China. Chapter 19.D.2 of the online textbook provides a synthesis of how and when armed resistance succeeds and fails.

Obviously "captcrisis" didn't bother to read the original post carefully, nor the Table of Contents of the online chapters, or else he/she would have seen that the aforesaid issues are discussed in depth. A serious person, that is, not a troll, might have read some of the material and responded to it thoughtfully.

As for when and by whom armed resistance is justified, I didn't discuss that in the post, but the topic is addressed in online chapters 18.D (classical international law) and 21, and the historical chapters of the printed textbook, particularly 2.K.

In short, the Americans of the Revolutionary Period, generally adopted the views of their English predecessors of the Glorious Revolution, whose views were based on Protestant resistance theory from continental Europe. The French, Swiss, Dutch, and other Protestants in turn had adopted their views from Catholic resistance theory of the Medieval and Early Modern periods. The philosophy looked on self-appointed lone actors (e.g., Routh, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan) with great skepticism. Instead, resistance was to be led by "intermediate magistrates"--that is, local government officials who stood in-between the king/tyrant and the people. In that view, the American Revolution would be highly justified, as independence was declared by the unanimous act of representatives of each of the 13 colonies. Similarly, under Magna Carta art. 61, armed resistance against a king who violated Magna Carta could take place only after declaration by a majority of the barons.

A serious commenter might have read and engaged with some of the above material, particularly the free online chapters. Fabricating strawmen is not acting in good faith.

[BadLib]

The Evolution of Firearms Technology" (Chapter 23) reminds me of my response to those who claim that "the Founders couldn't have envisioned the power of modern day 'assault weapons'". To them I reply:

If you gathered the more mechanically minded of the Founders in a room, in an hour or two (assuming they were not distracted by all the modern things around them) you likely could explain how an AR-15 works and they would not be surprised or shocked. Perhaps the greatest sources of interest would be the packaging of the modern cartridge and the fact that modern equipment could crank out a massive number of rounds and/or AR-15s - all completely interchangeable. Once explained, they would view the "semiautomatic" mechanism as a natural progression of technology and an application of simple physics and not be surprised that over 200 years of refinement had resulted in such weapons.

On the other hand, explaining that almost anyone in the US (and most of the world) could now communicate within a few hundred milliseconds with almost anyone else anywhere in the world and broadcast their ideas/misinformation/etc to millions to see at basically no cost would completely perplex them. They were familiar with a world where electricity hadn't even been harnessed for light, let alone communication (even a telegraph would have been a shocking thing to them). The "state of the art" in broadcast high speed communication was "One if by Land, Two if by Sea" - very limited in bandwidth and distance (esp. if the weather was poor or it was daytime). An individual who was not of significant means or stature could stand on the street corner and hold a sign or mount a soapbox and yell out his message but would have found it virtually impossible to spread that message very far on their own. Perhaps they could have afforded to have handbills printed and go around town posting them in their town and adjacent towns but that would be about it. Those of means and/or high stature would have been able to get their views published in newspapers, but even those took some time to distribute.

In short, the fact that under educated "commoners" could use the internet to spread and receive false claims such as those in "Pizzagate" quickly and without constraint worldwide would have been inconceivable to the Founders. They may well have believed that such a dangerous mechanism should be subject to censorship due to the danger of such a mechanism. Not so much with firearms.

[Brett Bellmore]

"They may well have believed that such a dangerous mechanism should be subject to censorship due to the danger of such a mechanism."

I'm thinking almost certainly not. They were acquainted with censorship, they'd hardly have been stupid enough to think censorship REALLY had anything to do with the thing being censored not being true, once you permitted it.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

David Kopel's reply is appreciated -- it's helpful when contributors reply. I'm not sure about the "troll" part.

I have read Second Amendment-related materials from various perspectives. Granting "firearms law" is more open-ended.

My position is that there is a constitutional right to self-defense, including by usage of firearms, but I would not place the individual right to own firearms expressed in Heller in that "bucket." The 2A is concerned about a certain subset, involving a group effort, overseen by governmental agents.

So, people were worried about the Brits seizing gun stores in 1775, and members of the militia served in organized groups. State governors and the president were leaders of the militia.

It interests me that so many supporting an individual rights view is not concerned about the traditional militia. An originalist, I would think, should be appalled that the people at large are not currently required to be part of the active militia, regulated, trained, and periodically called to service. A select group of police are doing the job that should be done mainly by this militia, right?

I think there is something to a people's militia having a bigger role but I am not an originalist. I accept the modern police departments and so on. I don't think the individual rights view has to be stereotyped as thinking the accused person out to shoot Trump is a member of the militia. Both sides need more nuance at times.